Looking Back One Year Ago: The Incredible St. James Hospital

BUTTE, MT - A year ago, I was given the rare opportunity to step inside one of Butte’s most intriguing and quietly iconic landmarks—the Old St. James Hospital.

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Nestled just off South Idaho Street, the building rises like a beautiful monument to another time.

Myself living just down the street, I’ve looked at it nearly every day from my bedroom window, but actually walking through it was an entirely different experience.

Photos of The Old St. James Hospital in Butte, Montana

At first glance, St. James might seem like the kind of place ghost stories are written about. And that’s what I thought I’d be getting myself into when I met up with Cameron, the building’s owner, and Pablo, who was helping lead the charge on its future.

The idea was to lean into the building’s spooky charm. But almost instantly, that idea melted away.

What I found inside wasn’t some haunted shell—it was a sort of time capsule, complete with ornate moldings, massive windows, handcrafted details, and that unmistakable feeling of permanence radiated from every brick and beam. It might've been a little eerie, but it was beautiful.

Looking back a year later, I still think this might be one of the most underappreciated pieces of Butte’s history. While others might point to the Metals building, the old vault-turned-bar, or the 1909 First National Bank structure downtown, the Old St. James Hospital holds a quieter kind of power.

And now, you can see what I saw that day.

Here’s an exclusive gallery from my tour of the Old St. James Hospital—one of Butte’s hidden gems: